The next day, Tanjiro was kicked out first thing in the morning to do the mountain descent training.
Then Urokodaki took Marcus alone to the clearing from the day before.
They stood facing each other, in silence. The morning air was cold, and neither of them was in a hurry to break it.
Finally, Urokodaki spoke.
"Marcus. Your breathing technique... besides getting stronger near women, does it have any other characteristics?"
Marcus knew he couldn't hide everything. And he didn't want to either. There were things he needed the master's help analyzing.
He just couldn't go too far.
He thought about it for a moment and answered frankly: "It seems like the closer I am, the better the effect. And I think the more women there are around me... the greater the amplification. But for now I've only been in contact with Nezuko, so I can't fully confirm it."
Even having mentally prepared himself, Urokodaki's shoulders sank a little more.
He was quiet for a moment. Then he asked: "And the forms? Besides the First Form, do you have any others?"
"Not for now." Marcus was honest. "The First Form came out of nowhere. I probably need more... inspiration."
"..."
Urokodaki understood perfectly well what "inspiration" meant.
He inhaled deeply. Exhaled slowly. And turned around, giving him his back.
"Listen."
His voice changed. There was no more exasperation or frustration. Only gravity.
"I don't care how special your technique is. I don't care how it works or what activates it."
"If you want to become a demon slayer, you must obey the discipline of the Corps and carry the responsibility of protecting the innocent."
"Having strength is good. But the nature of your heart is more important." He paused. "If one day you dare use that strength to harm others... especially to take advantage of women..."
His voice turned glacial.
"I will kill you myself. Understood?"
It wasn't a threat. It was a promise.
Marcus dropped every pose. Every smile. Every facade. He looked at him directly and nodded firmly.
"Understood, master. Even though I crave strength, I know where the limits are. I know what should and shouldn't be done."
He paused briefly and added: "My breathing technique has... unconventional activation conditions. But in essence it's for combat. I'll use it to kill demons. Nothing more."
"..."
Urokodaki stared at him hard for several seconds.
Finally, he nodded.
"Remember what you've said."
He walked toward the small storage shed without looking back. "Get ready to start today's training."
"..."
Marcus stood still for a moment. And then, before Urokodaki disappeared, he shouted:
"Master! I already have my own breathing technique. Shouldn't I enter this year's Final Selection?"
Urokodaki's steps stopped dead.
Several seconds of silence.
And when he finally responded, his voice came out so cold that the mountain air seemed to drop several degrees.
"You don't have permission to go."
"...Why?"
"WHY?!"
Urokodaki's back emanated a coldness that had nothing to do with the weather.
"Because I haven't made the mental preparations for the total ruin of my reputation yet!!"
"..."
Marcus shut his mouth.
'Fine... if I can't go, I won't go.'
'It's not like I'm dying to go that soon anyway...'
"So what are we training today?"
"Wait."
Shortly after, Urokodaki returned carrying three gourds of different sizes.
Marcus recognized them instantly. As a good connoisseur of the series, he knew right away what direction the training would take.
"Starting today, Constant Concentration practice."
"But master, just by being next to Nezuko I automatically enter that state. I don't need to..."
"Shut up!"
Marcus shut his mouth.
Urokodaki took a step toward him.
"I know your technique is peculiar. But tell me something: can you guarantee that you'll always have a woman by your side? Always? On every mission, in every ambush, in every moment?"
"And if you're alone? What do you do? Sit around waiting for someone to show up? And if there is someone with you, but the demon discovers your weakness? What do you think it'll do? It'll skip you to kill her first. Because that's what any demon with half a brain would do."
His voice hardened.
"Killing demons is not a game. Demons aren't stupid either. You can't entrust your life entirely to others."
"..."
The nonchalance gradually disappeared from Marcus's face.
"Understood."
Seeing that the mocking attitude had truly vanished, something in Urokodaki's posture relaxed.
A hunter must learn to restrain himself in many things.
It was clear this kid was never going to restrain himself when it came to lust. That was already a lost cause.
But if on top of that he couldn't control his arrogance and impatience either... then there truly would be no saving him.
After carefully passing on the fundamentals of Total Concentration Constant, Urokodaki headed up the mountain to supervise Tanjiro.
Marcus's training was simple: some gourds, a clearing, and figure it out on your own.
Tanjiro's required much more attention, with traps that had to be constantly updated and active supervision.
Before leaving, Urokodaki left these words with one last shred of hope.
"Practice well. Work hard to deploy your full strength without needing a woman nearby."
A half smile escaped Marcus that he wasn't sure was amusement or pity.
At the end of the day, Urokodaki was still clinging to the last speck of dignity he had left as an instructor and former Pillar. And Marcus wasn't going to be the one to rip it away from him.
Though the old man was wrong about one detail.
What Marcus had demonstrated wasn't his reduced strength. It was his actual full strength. Nezuko's presence didn't prevent him from getting weaker; what it did was boost him beyond his base level. Without her, he didn't lose anything. With her, he had more power.
But he didn't correct that misunderstanding. Yesterday he had awakened a new breathing technique and a form of his own. Pretending that today he already understood every detail would have sounded too implausible.
Better to drip feed the information. Let time pass, get familiar with his own Breathing, and reveal things to the old man little by little.
...
In the mountains, you don't count the days.
A year of training passed.
Tanjiro didn't have a single day off. The first half of the year was a brutal, endless repetition of the mountain descent training. Day after day after day. The second half added learning the breathing technique and forms, and the descent shifted to areas where the air was thin and every breath cost twice as much.
Marcus wasn't sitting around either.
He was just as busy, though in different ways.
It took him three months to barely manage to maintain Constant Concentration during daily life. And even then it was a fragile, precarious state that crumbled the moment he put his body through intense exercise.
By comparison, Tanjiro, Zenitsu, and Inosuke in the original plot had reached a combat ready level of Constant Concentration in just one or two months, and that was while recovering from injuries and training other things at the same time.
The difference in talent was obvious. Marcus had no way of denying it.
Urokodaki noticed it too. And during that period, Marcus gradually revealed the specific details of the Breath of Desire to him. How it really worked. What it improved and what it didn't. Until the old man clearly understood that a woman's presence wasn't a requirement for Marcus to fight, but an amplifier.
That distinction changed everything.
And with it, Urokodaki finally managed to overcome that barrier that had been lodged in his heart for months.
He allowed Marcus to train alongside Nezuko.
What's more, he even helped him convince Tanjiro that Marcus should be the one in charge of watching over her.
But nothing in this life is free.
From the day Marcus set up next to Nezuko, he also took on the responsibility of designing and maintaining the traps for Tanjiro's mountain training.
And it was from that day on... that the life of Tanjiro Kamado became a hell with a first and last name.
The logs that swung across his path were no longer just logs. Now they had sharpened edges.
The bamboo poles that whipped him as he passed no longer just hit. They were coated in alcohol. Every lash burned as if someone had set the wound on fire.
The false floor traps, which before hid simple wooden stakes, now came with company: scorpions and centipedes. Not venomous, but their bites hurt in such a horrific way that Tanjiro would have preferred the venom.
And sometimes, even at night, when exhaustion dragged him into sleep and his body finally found a moment of peace... suddenly something cold and scaly slithered between the sheets.
An entire nest of snakes would appear in his bed!
They didn't bite. But the scream Tanjiro let out could probably be heard at the foot of the mountain.
Marcus even had the nerve to give it a name: "Permanent Alertness Training."
'To develop reflexes and keep your guard up twenty four hours a day,' he had explained with a straight face.
Poor Tanjiro lived on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
Every step on the mountain was a threat. Every shadow, suspicious. Every sound, a potential trap. And the worst part was that constant, persistent, impossible to shake feeling... that someone was watching him.
Because he could always see him. Or rather, sense him.
If it weren't for the fact that that bastard had never abandoned his disgusting habit of going after Nezuko, Tanjiro would have fallen to his knees and begged for mercy months ago.
But he couldn't. Because he knew exactly what Marcus was after.
'He wants me to soften up... He wants me to let my guard down. He wants me to one day, exhausted and broken, say "do whatever you want" and hand Nezuko over to him.'
'NEVER!'
'I'll eat every snake on this mountain before I hand my sister over to him!'
And so, with that mentality, the two of them spent an entire year sizing each other up. Tanjiro gritting his teeth, enduring every trap, every scare, every provocation with the stubbornness of a mule with principles. And Marcus on the other side, racking his brain day and night, looking for increasingly creative ways to make his life miserable.
________
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